Thursday, September 30, 2010

"I never wanna take this for granted, so I try and keep motivation simple, real, and positive. If I am to
scrape a living, at least it's a living worth scraping. If there's no future in it, at least it's a present worth
remembering. For fires of happiness and waves of gratitude, for everything that brought us to that
point, enough at that moment in time, to do something worth remembering with a photograph or a scar
- I feel genuinely lucky to hand on heart say I love doing what I do, and though I may never be a rich
man, if I live long enough, I'll certainly have a tale or two for the nephews...and I dig the thought of that."

Sockertöpp: "A sugar-loaf pressed into a large cone. Sugarloaf Mountain can be cut or trimmed with a sugar-tong to get the appropriate pieces [for] coffee. Sugar Tops were stored sometimes in sugar chests. Sugarloafdisappeared from the grocery market [when] the mass produced bitsockret came, but can sometimes beavailable in stores with an old-fashioned touch."

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

"God is within her, she will not fail; God will help her at break of day."-NIV

"God has taken his place in her; she will not be moved. He will come to her help at the dawn of morning."-Bible in Basic English

"The poetic idea here seems to refer to the day as having turned away 'from' us at night, and then as turning about 'toward' us in the morning, after having gone, as it were, to the greatest distance from us."-Barnes' Notes

"God is in the midst of her....the church and people of God; not merely by his essence, power, and providence, as he is in the midst of the world; but by his gracious presence, and which always continues, though not always perceived..."-Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Sunday, September 26, 2010

It is both surprising and refreshing to me that this New York Times film columnist actually acknowledges the ubiquitous pretense of film festivals, being that people like him are often in close conjunction with the semantics of their production. Instead of an air of overall praise, he aligns himself with people like me who find it aggravating that a) the general public is rarely (if ever) given the opportunity to attend, b) most of the films screened (especially foreign submissions) are otherwise impossible to see, and c) independent films are sadly being taken off festival rosters in favor of manic depressive art films deemed worthy by executives (see title).

I learned from this article that a large contributing factor to these issues is high brow film societies' disdain for "the American art-movie economy" or "the independent sector" of festival submissions. Scott explains that independent film companies, struggling along with the rest of the country from the wayward economy, have started commercializing their material, be it minimally and begrudgingly. Nevertheless, festival execs are aghast at the presence of any commercialization whatsoever and have hitherto cast a furrowed critical brow on indie gems, resulting in their gradual replacement with a slew of depressing featured films that display absolutely no evocation of viewing pleasure whatsoever. In other words, anything redemptive, American, and only-commercial-enough-to-put-food-on-the-table is rejected.

Now, don't get me wrong, I can appreciate a despondent foreign film as much as the next guy, but those that I'm not as crazy about I wouldn't be able to see even if I wanted to. Scott alludes that the reason for this restriction is the executive assumption that the general public isn't interested in these kinds of films, meaning there's no need for festivals to be made readily available. Neither are the films themselves for that matter, because any kind of mass distribution would certainly buck their "no commercialism" rule.

Mind's eye of festival execs: "If we eliminate the only films they'd be interested in attending and make every other film impossible to find then maybe we can make our high brow critical society even smaller..."

Thus, promotion to keep festival attendance a caste system of what Scott refers to as "a transnational fraternity of directors, journalists, and well, festival programmers" is in full swing.

After all that, I guess I'm just complaining because I feel left out, festival films are impossible to find, and I love indies.

"Las Coleccionistas is a photography studio in Barcelona, which produces and disseminates visual projects. Understand photography as the interplay between light and emotion as a way of communicating at its most provocative, connecting with people and spread, but also as a form of participation, a tool that helps them find new meanings and alternative interpretations are closer to of their environment."

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Here’s to those nights.Those wintery nights on the second floor of the building of bird’s egg blue,in the city we hardly saw.Never much mattered,sitting on that $60 couch we loved so well – bottles of yellow tail, the faux-fur blanket,watching the mystery of Trinity unfold or the brotherhood of an Irish gang be destroyed and redeemed,all while Figment jumped up the walls and Harmony laid on the orange chair...gazing adoringly over at us;those wintery nights of Angels & Airwaves and Band of Horseswhen we made pasta dinner and stayed up late,had tickle fights and talked deeply about friendships,shared the last cigarette;those wintery nights when we were motivated to do anything and everything.And write.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

New York Times Style magazine columnist Leanne Shapton may just be my new favorite writer.

Her theoretical and personal views are reflected in "We Three Things," a column that concentrates on a collective theme amongst a trinity of objects, ideas, design, art, technology, literature, food...basically anything quirky or quintessential in the mind's eye of its author.

Monday, September 20, 2010

"Bands don't 'lose' the ability to make 'good' music. They simply choose to make something different than what you like. Hence the reason people always argue about which album from a band is better, newer, older, etc. Any artist in the world can sit down and use the same formulas to write the exact same types of songs again. Billy Corgan, even, could probably sit down and write an entire album that sounds shockingly like Gish, but why would he want to? Gish came out in a certain time period. It was a great album because of the context in which it was released. He's doing something different now. Most people don't like it, but that doesn't mean he should resort to copying his old material idea for idea.

Black Swan (In the vein of everything Hitchcockian that I love...loosely based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's
novella The Double, which you can read for free online here.) Opens December 1, 2010

Blue Valentine Opens December 31, 2010

Never Let Me Go based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro (An absolute MUST read...look for a review in
the next few days.) Select release September 15, 2010, but it opens in Orlando October 8--maybe look for it near you then??

It's Kind of a Funny Story based on the novel by Ned Vizzini (Currently reading and already loving.) Opens October 8, 2010

Here's a cosmetic ode to those luscious lady libertines: Cruella, Maleficent, and The Queen.

This isn't the first time that M.A.C. has devilishly lured me with their adorable Disney devotion...I bought this little lip gloss diddy for my friend Lyssa a while back.Fantasia is still one of my all-time favorites.

One of the first movies my mom ever saw in theaters was Sleeping Beauty.One of the first movies my sisters ever saw in theaters was The Little Mermaid.One of the first movies I ever saw in theaters was Beauty and the Beast.My cat's name is Figment (after the purple dragon at Epcot), my oldest sister and her husband live in Orlando (though he can't stand the theme parks, the rest of our family frequents them almost annually), and my favorite c.d. is a Disney compilation that one of my best friends Lyssa put together a few years back--featured are "Hakuna Matata," "A Whole New World," and "Under the Sea" to name a few.

Needless to say, when I stumbled on Disney Concept Art during my new found appreciation for illustration I became infatuated.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

A few excerpts on the novel by its parts (Italy, India, Indonesia) and its immediate effect on my life: memories induced, lessons learned, intertextuality...etc.

Italy

Elizabeth Gilbert’s life here caused within me a spontaneous combustion of nostalgia for my life abroad. For example, I allowed myself to have a chocolate croissant the other day for the first time since I’d been home from France (my sister and her husband bought it for me from a cute French bakery in downtown Winter Park). It was so good I nearly cried. I really wish that I had indulged in French cuisine more when I’d been over there. Liz (and yes, I feel connected to her enough that we are now on a first name basis) was so ambitious in her attempt to find obscure restaurants, and her success in relaying the mastery of these dishes not only justifies and compliments the life’s work of these hard working Italians but also promotes their way of life with eagerness and ease. (Serious props to her understanding of ancient Roman history, too). Overall, however, reading this portion of the novel allowed me to fully appreciate my life abroad for exactly what it was: beautiful, imperfect, difficult, rewarding, enlightening, compelling, full of fast-paced and slowed down memories, new people, history, languages, tears, laughter and regret. And beauty. And God. And life.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

When watching Amelie for the bajillionth time, I came to the scene where she cheerfully flits over to the blind homeless man waiting to cross the busy street [the homeless man who plays bewitching tunes on an early 20th century record player in the Abbesses train stop] and aids him down the comic strip sidewalk to the train, all the while explaining each and every zany, lovely goings-on that occurs as they pass...

And I cried for how beautiful it was.

In my personal opinion, this scene independently portrays the solitary aim of the film as a whole, a film that everyoneneeds to watch at least once in his or her lifetime.

The other night I had the pleasure of covering the 2010 Honda Civic Tour in Orlando. A friend from work only had one press ticket on her hands (and wasn't very keen on attending a concert alone) so I kindly relieved her of the task ;] Read my full review here!

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

I've loved this song since I was about nine years old and heard my friend Jenna play it on the piano at her birthday party, but up until now I had never known what it was called.Apparently it's from a movie called Dragonheart, but I remember it being called "The Rose" when I saw the sheet music sitting on her piano stand...I don't know, I could be wrong.

Seven Years in Tibet and Patch Adams have used it as their anthem as well. It may very well be the best movie music with Shakespeare in Love's themeas a mightily close second...